How do I submit my dissertation as a Peer Reviewed publication?

Hi Todd,

You can enter your dissertation manually into ResearchGate if you have a digital copy - but dissertations are not automatically recognised or registered by RG. RG mainly finds and recognises 'articles' through the conventional databases - such as recognised publishing houses - using systems such as digital object identifiers. It doesn't even recognise International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) for books or book chapters. Again - one has to manually import those. Your school (University) stores your dissertation in either a local or national repository upon completion - but this does not transfer over to other systems - such as RG etc. 

Thanks a lot Dean,

The only place that have found in RG so far to import it has an option for 'Thesis' but not dissertation. Is that the only means of importation?

Dear Todd

You can submit your dissertation to ResearchGate, using the Thesis option. You have to manually upload your dissertation as a pdf or Word document. It is very unlikely that ResearchGate will find your dissertation when you search for it, since it is not published in any journal. I uploaded my Master's dissertation, and it doesn't really matter whether you call it a thesis or a dissertation (at least not in my opinion). This does not, however, count as a peer-reviewed publication. You can get a unique DOI for it through ResearchGate, though, and you can also request feedback from others, effectively reviewing it.

If you want it peer-reviewed and published in a journal, you most likely have to rewrite your dissertation in order to accommodate an appropriate journal. Look for journals that might be interested in publishing whatever your dissertation is about, then alter it so that it conforms to their standards. Send it to them, and see what happens. If it gets published in a journal recognized by ResearchGate, they will typically detect the publication and shortly afterwards ask you if it is yours.

I doubt your school had any obligation to submit your dissertation anywhere, as this is not normal, in my experience. However, many universities have an online database where the public is able to access the dissertations of their students. Perhaps your school did this? If so, this is equivalent to putting it on ResearchGate, which makes it publicly available (but not a peer-reviewed publication).

Wow Espen,

Now that helped a lot! Thanks so much for taking the time. I'll now look for the right journal.

Sincerely grateful,

Todd

No problem!

Best of luck with your publication.

:-)